Pride in Practice – quality improvement standards for GP practices

Pride in Practice (PiP) is a quality assurance service for GP practices that strengthens and develops practice staff’s relationships with their lesbian, gay and bisexual patients within a local community.

“I was aware of PiP, now I know it in more detail, how it’s implemented and used”.

BHP participant

Endorsed by The Royal College of GP’s it is a support package that enables practices to effectively meet the needs of their lesbian, gay and bisexual patients. It also supports them to meet the requirements of the Clinical Commissioning Group, the Care Quality Commission and other bodies that they work with.

It has been designed to make life easier for clinicians, practice managers and staff and works in partnership with the practice team to meet the increasing demands from policy makers, patients and staff.

The programme offers on-going, regular support through a dedicated LGF account manager and a suite of accessible resources. In just a few simple steps, Pride in Practice evidences the medical practice’s commitment and compliance with the General Medical Council Good Practice Guidelines and the Equality Act 2010.

The award demonstrates a practice’s commitment and dedication to ensuring a fully inclusive patient-centred service and is attained through a short, efficient and focussed self-assessment process and highlights a practice’s strengths and any areas where The Lesbian & Gay Foundation can offer support.

Pride in Practice provides:

resources and practical support to deliver an inclusive service for lesbian gay and bisexual patients

lesbian gay and bisexual patients’ insight so a practice can be proactive about lesbian gay and bisexual patient needs

promotion of a practice within the lesbian gay and bisexual community to reduce the perception of homophobia and biphobia within your service

Pride in Practice encourages:

lesbian gay and bisexual patients being open and trusting; reducing the length and number of lesbian gay and bisexual patient’s consultations

higher quality of service; could positively influence results from the soon to be introduced friends and family test results

Why has Pride in Practice been developed?

Lesbian, gay and bisexual people have told us that it is important to them to be open and honest about their sexual orientation with their GP.

Our service users want to visit GPs where they feel safe and able to be open and honest about their sexual orientation. They want to have a GP that recognises, understands and acts upon their individual needs.

Could this approach be applied to another group? For including/meeting the needs of disabled people or trans people in healthcare practices for example?

It is a simple way to inform patients that GP practices understand them and that they can be trusted.

We know that for:

1 in 4 lesbian, gay and bisexual people are not out to any health professionals (NHS Wirral, 2012)

Lesbian, gay and bisexual patients are twice as likely to report they have no trust or confidence in their GP (National GP Survey 2012)

If lesbian, gay and bisexual people have experienced discrimination at any point, their fear of further discrimination will often prevent them from speaking out. (D. Herda 2013)

Discussion point

Think about the Pride in Practice approach. Could a similar method of quality improvement, with an award scheme bring benefits for your own client group?

Activity

What changes would make healthcare experiences better for your client group? What would GPs and other practice staff gain from understanding more about particular patients’ needs? What benefits would it bring to consultations?

The LGF developed Pride in Practice to overcome some of the difficulties experienced by LGB patients and also to bring clarity about their needs to healthcare settings and staff – leading to better health outcomes and therefore an economic saving.

Could your organisation develop a quality award scheme (does it need to?) or would simple guidance be sufficient via NHS Choices for example?

Locally – what learning opportunities are there for GPs and practice staff? On line, face to face? How could you present your expertise on patient’s needs to benefit patients and practitioners?

Through a trans men’s focus group as part of the BHP project, it was found that the changes could really be very simple. A basic understanding of gender identity would go a long way to easing some of the stressful situations encountered when seeking health advice.

Respectful approaches were also cited as key – in particular using a trans person’s preferred name and ensuring that changes to medical records relating to name and gender are not overly burdensome.